


wakening

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Series: SASO 2017 [36]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Challenge: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics | SASO 2017, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-06
Updated: 2017-08-06
Packaged: 2018-12-11 19:27:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11720952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: “Do you know, when Tsumu and I were kids, we went to Okinawa with our parents and hermit crabs nipped him on the soles of his feet.”Osamu at the end of the pier with a pile of seashells.





	wakening

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SASO 2017 Bonus Round 5: Clue | [originally posted here](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/24808.html?thread=15478248#cmt15478248)

The sun had not yet risen when Osamu swung himself out of bed, set his bare feet on the floor and went to the balcony. He made no sound, for he’d had a lifetime’s worth of practising how to be quiet. How not to disturb someone sleeping in his room, in his bed.

It had been years since Atsumu moved out, but Osamu wore his old habits like a safety blanket.

So he watched the dark, the tinges of pink peeking through the clouds, and took the rickety wooden stairs down to the pier. The sand was cool between his toes, the seashells strewn along the coast. He bent down to pick one up, then another.

He was surprised to hear someone coming up behind him, after a while, and then not surprised at all; he should have known. Kita was not Atsumu, who could sleep through three alarms and Osamu shaking him lightly, and then wake forgetting everything Osamu had told him before leaving the house. Only Kita could make a soft step in the sand still sound decisive.

“You’re up early,” Osamu greeted him, without turning around. He remained where he crouched, plucked another shell clean of seaweed and added it to his tiny pile.

“So are you,” said Kita.

As he approached, Osamu felt a familiar weight come to rest upon his shoulders, glanced up to see Kita draping his jacket around them, the back of his hand brushing Osamu’s cheek deliberately. Wrapped up in this sudden warmth, Osamu felt the morning chill in his bones like a salt-kissed breeze. He looked out at the waves, the tide coming in.

Unlike Osamu, Kita had had the foresight to put on flip-flops before coming down. Osamu smiled.

“Do you know, when Tsumu and I were kids, we went to Okinawa with our parents and hermit crabs nipped him on the soles of his feet.”

Kita smiled back. “I suppose you were not so unfortunate.”

Osamu shook his head. “They preferred to harass him. I can’t imagine why.”

“No,” Kita murmured. “Neither can I. Couldn’t sleep?”

“Something like that.”

His palm was getting full, so Osamu showed it to Kita, tipped it so all of the shells slid out of his hands, back down onto the sand. There were shells with scalloped edges in mottled brown, tiny conches that shone where the first light caught them, iridescent spirals with faint rust-coloured winding bands, shells that were chipped and imperfect.

“Tsumu and I used to play this game, at the beach. To see who could find more shells.”

Kita bent down and reached for a shell like the moon.

“And did you win?” he asked.

“About half the time,” said Osamu.

As he spoke, his fingers found a lazy rhythm of their own, searching for patterns in the sand. It wasn’t like he missed Atsumu. There was no need for _missing_ , when together meant what it did, to them, and Kita understood too. He made no comment on Osamu’s nostalgia. There were parts of him he did not touch.

There were times that Osamu wished he would. There were times he ached for it. To splinter, to break, to lose himself and remember again; he’d never thought he wanted any of that, but if it was Kita—

Kita was not Atsumu, and Osamu’s world brimmed with more.

The sea crashed on the pier. In the distance, the mist shaped itself around the silhouette of a lone sailboat, then another. Osamu took Kita’s hand in his, pressed that moonlike shell between their palms, a little night sky they kept to themselves as the dawn rose.


End file.
